Carla Esparza, standing at 5’11, may be one of the UFC’s smallest athletes, but she left a big impression in her Strawweight bout against Yan Xiaonan this weekend.
There’s no nice way to put it. Esparza demolished Xiaonan. Carla’s grappling and ground-and-pound made the Chinese fighter – who, prior to this, had yet to lose a fight in the UFC – look like an amateur. Xionan displayed next to no ground defense and ate shots to the head for almost the entirety of the two rounds the fight lasted.
DC: Esparza “deserves” title shot… but might not get it
Esparza once held the Strawweight title, and a performance like that indicates that she is in full pursuit of reclaiming the belt. She called for a title shot against freshly crowned champ Rose Namajunas – the exact fighter that Esparza defeated to claim the title the first time around.
Daniel Cormier, former two-division champion, doesn’t see it going down that way. “It always doesn’t just work like ‘earn this, it belongs to me.” said the champ-turned-commentator. While Cormier conceded that Esparza has earned the title fight with her performance against Xiaonan, there are other factors at play before she can take a run at Namajunas.
Rose Namajunas knocked Zhang Weili out with a single kick to the head to reclaim the Strawweight title, becoming the first ever woman to do so in the UFC. However, DC pointed out that in a fight lasting only a minute, audiences and matchmakers alike didn’t get to see much of either fighter.
Fast knockouts make for exciting viewing, but don’t tell us much about either combatant. On the other hand, when Esparza defeated Rose, it was a thoroughly one-sided affair characteristic of Esparza’s wrestling-heavy style.
Dana White concedes that Esparza may have to wait until a Zhang v Namajunas rematch her shot at the title. Zhang Weili was the champion who defeated Joanna Jedrzejczyk in one of the greatest MMA bouts ever to grace our screens.
She also knocked Jessica Andrade out in the first round of her first title defence. Weili’s resume is the greatest argument for a rematch against Rose – we simply haven’t seen enough of these two fighters against each other to make a call either way.
Either way, grudge matches make for great pay-per-view numbers, and “Thug” Rose Namajunas revisiting her bouts against either Weili or Esparza is a lucrative prospect for the UFC.
Who do you think should have the next shot at the Strawweight title? Does Zhang Weili deserve an immediate rematch, or should Esparza get in on the back of her stunning performance against Yan Xiaonan? Should the two duke it out to see who gets to take on Rose? Let us know in the comments.
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